Mobile Suit Gundam: The Axis Chronicles
by zakuboy0079
Summary: The Year is 0080 and the One Year War is over. Not all of the Zeon forces have chosen to surrender and many have fled to Axis, a military base in the asteroid belt. The Earth Federal Forces have assembled a small but powerful fleet, called Task Force 73, to conduct a long term long distance reconnaissance mission out to the asteroid belt to see what the renegade Zeeks are doing.


This is a story that I've had bouncing around in my head for a while. I hope everyone enjoys this first chapter. Please read and review.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Axis Chronicles

Written by: "zakuboy"

Chapter One: Into the Void

Jaburo: Above Space Dock #12

January 28, 0080

There was a breeze, just enough to make the leaves on the surrounding trees rustle and keep the local insect population down to a minor annoyance. The screech of a bird, probably some sort of parrot, came clearly through the air. Above, the stars sparkled in a clear sky with a sickle shaped Moon hanging high in the sky like the blade of a reaper's scythe.

The wind gusted slightly and blew a lock of her red hair out of its place behind her ear. Christina Mackenzie reached up with her left hand and brushed the offending lock back into its place with the motion that is instinctive to women. Hair in place, the hand went back to its position, supporting her upper body, as she leaned back where she sat to look at the night sky.

Behind her there was an open door with light pouring out of it. The door didn't lead into a building, but into an earth covered, reinforced concrete bunker. This bunker, in turn, lead into one of the giant underground space docks that makes up a small part of the Earth Federal Forces Jaburo headquarters complex.

She had arrived at headquarters a week earlier, along with her heavily damaged RX-78NT-1 Gundam. The Armored Layers Experimental Gundam, "Alex" for short, was currently a couple hundred feet below her standing in a maintenance bay. There were technicians swarming around it taking note of all the damage that the Gundam had received at the hands of that single Zaku II Kai.

Christina, Chris to her friends, let out a small sigh, remembering the events of a few weeks earlier. It was still hard for her to believe that the Zaku had been able to damage her Gundam as badly as it had. Sure the pilot had set up a clever ambush, but still… She let out a small sigh with that thought. She had been able to stop the Zaku in the end, but not before it had chopped off one of the Alex's arm mounted Gatling cannons, put a huge slash in the suit's torso and cockpit hatch, decapitated the Gundam and damaged its backpack.

Sure, the Zaku's pilot had sacrificed himself to cause that amount of damage, but in simple accounting terms it had been more than a fair trade. The Alex would take months to repair and Chris wasn't even sure what would happen after it was. The One Year War was over and there wasn't a need for her highly maneuverable suit. Oh sure it might be used as a test bed for new technologies, but she doubted that would ever be used in a combat situation again. With a sigh she stood up, brushed some foliage off of her and headed back into the underground complex.

Jaburo: Fleet Tracking Room #2

January 28, 0080

Captain Martin Kenyon was a career staff officer. Even with all the casualties caused by the OYW, just over by a few weeks, he had never seen combat, not even when the Zeonic forces lead by Char Aznable had assaulted the underground complex. This lack of experience didn't keep him from thinking that he was the greatest military mind of all time.

"Those Zeek bastards gave up too easy," he grumbled to himself as he leaned over a large planning table. How was he supposed to rocket up into the flag ranks without his plans being used to defeat the Principality? He totally ignored the fact that all the plans, or parts of plans, that he had contributed during the war had either been rejected or they had turned out to be massive failures. Luckily he had been able to blame the failed missions on the soldiers in the field not following his plan and none of the black marks of the failed missions had made it into his personnel file.

Windows were open all over the large tabletop screen showing the disposition and numbers of the defeated forces at the end of the war. Some of the lists were the ships and mobile suits that has been confirmed destroyed, others were lists of equipment captured during the yearlong war. The list that concerned the general staff the most was a long one that listed all the Zeonic material and forces that were missing.

Most of the ships and their mobile suit compliments had last been confirmed in one of four places. The first place was Solomon after the Federation's victory there. The second place was the battle of A Baoa Qu. Many ships had fallen back from that battle after the news that both Commandant Gihren and Admiral Kycilia had been killed. The last two places that Zeonic forces had been confirmed was at Side 3 itself and at their large military and manufacturing facility at Grenada on the far side of the moon.

Many of the unit that had been stationed at the last two locations had simply vanished at the end of the war. Federation commanders couldn't even be sure exactly what had been there to begin with because large amounts of data had been erased from the main computers of each of the colonies and from the ones at Grenada. The estimates ran from a few ships and mobile suits, to several dozen ships and hundreds of possible mobile suits.

The thought of a battle fleet sized formation roaming around the Earth Sphere sent a chill down Kenyon's spine. Then another though had crossed his mind that relieved his tension a bit. There was no longer a facility that could support such a formation that wasn't either Federation control or at the very least under extremely close Federation observation.

Many rumors had been heard from captured Zeon soldiers about Rear Admiral Delaz taking his fleet of about a dozen warships out into what was now being called the Shoal Zone. "Where did all those other ships go," Kenyon continued to mutter as he put all the ships under Delaz's command into the "known" category.

Then he remembered another thing that he had heard even before the One Year War had broken out. The Zeeks had built a way station in the Asteroid Belt. "What was its name," he said to himself with a little more excitement in his voice now. He finally found the file, "Axis," he breathed as if he were saying the name of a lover. He had found the mission that would make him a flag officer. He started to pull together possible resources for a mission that was starting together in his mind. He hoped to have something on the Fleet Operations Officer's desk in a few days.

Jaburo: Office of the Chief of Fleet Operations

February 1, 0080

Admiral John Foley was an unsung hero of the One Year War. The two largest Federation successes of the war, Operation Odessa and Operation Star One, had been conceived under his command. He had also had a hand in the mission of the _White Base_ and its distracting romp through space, keeping a ridiculously large number of the Principality's forces busy while the Fleet headed towards Solomon. General Revil had taken all the glory for those operations, but then again glory wasn't something that Foley had pursued to any huge degree.

He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a pipe and a pouch of good Cavendish tobacco. People had told him that the habit was bad for him and that he should quit for his health, but he always thought better with the pipe in his mouth and lit. "Besides," he thought to himself as he reached for the IN box on the edge of his desk, "it's not like I really inhale anyway."

He pulled the first folder off the top of the pile, noticing that it had the red border of a proposed operation, flipped it open and looked at the cover sheet. "Oh god," he said to the room, "not another plan from Kenyon." However, being the good officer that he was, he took the time to read past the cover sheet. He was glad he did.

Kenyon had written about his concerns about the large number of former Principality warships that were missing, that a large number of these vessels had headed towards the Asteroid Belt and the way station, Axis, that the Principality had built there in the years leading up to the war. He supported these conclusions with telemetry taken by Federation warships at A Baoa Qu and also a few captures by deep space surveillance satellites. These two indications said to Foley that Kenyon was, for once in his life, right about something.

Foley turned to the mission proposal and was again surprised to see something sensible. Captain Kenyon proposed that a small fleet, built around a _Pegasus_ class assault carrier, should be dispatched to the Asteroid Belt to obtain an accurate picture of the forces there. He also made a recommendation that the Federation might want to establish its own base out there to support long-term observation and possible action against the Axis Zeon forces there.

Foley reached out and pressed the intercom button on his phone. "Yes sir," came the response a second later. "Alice, would you please get a hold of Captain Kenyon over in Intentions and Planning and have him come over to my office at 13:00 for a working lunch." "Yes sir," said the female ensign that served as his secretary, and the connection was broken. He went back to looking at the proposed mission profile that the planning captain had given him and started making notes of his own on a separate pad of paper.

Jaburo: Outside the Office of the Chief of Fleet Operations

February 1, 0080

He was nervous. It was like getting called to the principal's office when you were in elementary school, you didn't know how it was going to go. He checked his uniform, for what had to be the fifth time, making sure that his high collar and Sam Brown belt were in the proper place. "Captain Kenyon?" the question snapped him back into reality. "Yes ensign," he replied turning to look at the young officer that worked for Admiral Foley. "The Admiral will see you now sir." She moved to open one of the wooden double doors that lead into the inner office of Admiral John Foley. Kenyon cleared his throat and followed the ensign inside.

He had never been inside the Admiral's office before. The layout was very simple. The Admiral's large was at the back of the office facing the door, with the flags of the Earth Federation and Earth Federal Space Forces behind it, in their proper corners of the room. The back wall was floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the main chamber of Jaburo's underground complex. Another wall was floor to ceiling bookshelves and the last had the standard computer equipment that was used for mission planning and simulations. The area in front of the desk was occupied by a long coffee table with a large leather couch on either side of it. The table had a simple lunch spread on it and the unused space was covered in papers. The Admiral was leaning back on one of the couches, a mug of coffee in one hand and a piece of yellow lined paper in the other.

"Captain Martin Kenyon, reporting as ordered sir," he said, standing at stiff attention at the end of the coffee table closest to the door. "Ah yes" said Foley as he set his mug back on the table. "At ease Captain and have a seat. Help yourself to some coffee and a sandwich." The Admiral waited until he had gotten a cup of coffee, doctored it to his liking and grabbed a sandwich off the platter in the center of the table. After he had finished Foley pulled a folder out from the papers piled on the table and Kenyon recognized it as the proposal folder that he had sent the night before. Crap, he thought to himself, the Admiral had already read it. But if the Admiral hadn't liked it why had he called him to his office for such an informal meeting? Kenyon relaxed with this thought, maybe something good was happening for once.

"I looked over your mission proposal Captain," Foley said holding up the folder, "and I think that there is a workable mission in here." Kenyon let out a silent sigh of relief; finally one of his plans seemed to have the makings of a plan that would succeed and finally earn him that thick gold stripe on his sleeve.

The Admiral continued, "I have some changes that I think would prove beneficial to the mission. I think that it is good idea to build the fleet around a _Pegasus_ class assault carrier, but I also think that there is a need to have more mobile suits available than a single _Pegasus _class can carry. I want to replace the _Magellan_ class escorts with a new version of the _Salamis_ class that we have just begun to produce. These _Salamis_ ships have the same firepower as the earlier versions, but they have the added benefit of a four mobile suit hanger and a launch catapult."

Kenyon had been looking at the proposed fleet make-up as the Admiral had talked and looked up as the older man finished speaking. "But sir if we do that the fleet won't have enough firepower to deal with the threats that I think are out there. We simply need the firepower that the _Magellan_ class ship can…"

The Admiral held up his hand. "Captain; I think the battle of Loum proved that ships without proper mobile suit support are extremely vulnerable to enemy MS. Therefore I think it is more important to have as many mobile suits as possible."

Kenyon thought about that for a second and then an idea dawned on him. "Sir I'm still not comfortable with such little firepower being sent out there, so why don't we upgrade the suits that we do send." The Admiral motioned for him to continue and he did. "First I think that the RX-78NT-1 should be included in this mission. This is for two reasons, first it is a superb combat machine and second the original Gundam put so much fear into Zeek pilots during the war having the Alex out there might be a major psychological factor."

The Admiral had lit his pipe while Kenyon spoke. The smoke irritated him, but he restrained his gag reflex because the man with the pipe was his superior. The pipe came out of the Admiral's mouth and pointed the stem at the Captain.

"Wasn't the Alex defeated by a Zaku that attacked it at its test facility in Side 6? Why would you want t include a suit that was so ineffective?" The pipe went back into the Admiral's mouth and he took another puff.

Kenyon had a ready answer for this question. "Sir I've looked at the reports on that incident and have come to the conclusion that that event was a fluke. The report from the pilot, a Lieutenant Junior Grade Christina Mackenzie I believe, stated that the Zaku drew her into an elaborately planned ambush. While it's embarrassing that one of our Gundam units could be so heavily damaged by a grunt suit, her efforts to keep the battle out of the city areas of the colony is one of the major factors that convinced Side 6 to sign its security treaty with us."

He was on a role now and continued on his analysis of the incident at Side 6. "Lieutenant Mackenzie was also highly restricted in how she could combat the enemy unit. Her suit was never issued its beam rifle, or even its shield. I'm sure that she could have defeated it quickly but, again, in a very sensible effort, she fought to keep from breaching the Zaku's reactor, which could have caused a catastrophic breach in the colony wall."

"I remember a similar event happened at Side 7 when the RX-78 was deployed," the Admiral said around his pipe, "a very bad time for everyone in that colony. The suit is one thing, but I'm not sure about Lieutenant Mackenzie as its pilot. Can the girl hold up under the stress of this kind of mission?"

"If her simulations are any indication, she'll be fine," Kenyon replied. "I do think that it would be prudent to put a more experienced pilot in overall command of the Mobile Suit Corps of this taskforce." Kenyon paused for a second and then continued. "I think that several GM's should be modified to work closely with the Alex. A good base suit would be the RGM-79GS, Space Command GM. They would then be modified so their performance characteristics more closely matched the NT-1's performance."

"Doing modifications of that complexity is very expensive and hard to justify," Foley said taking another puff on his pipe. "You want to equip the entire taskforce with these customized GM's?"

"No sir, not at all. Maybe three at the most, to operate alongside the Alex in a direct support role. Many of the suits we produced at the end of the war are high performance already and will need little to no modification." Kenyon had been searching the papers while he spoke. Finding what he needed he pulled them out and sat back on his couch and continued. "Any suit, in a medium range support roll, should be modified to carry beam cannons instead of a standard shell firing cannon. These upgrades will help make up for, what I think, is the taskforce's general lack of firepower."

Kenyon paused again while the Admiral tapped out his pipe, but continued when waved to do so as the Admiral set about cleaning his pipe. "I also think that all the suits should have more powerful reactors mounted in them. This would allow the all the suits in the taskforce to utilize full powered beam rifles instead of just the beam spray pistols. Again this is to maximize the combat abilities of the taskforce, it also gives our mobile suit pilots a huge advantage over their Zeon counterparts, because most Zeon suits can't be equipped with beam weaponry."

Admiral Foley stood, walked behind his desk and opened a drawer to put his pipe away. Closing the drawer he tuned to face Kenyon who was still seated on one of the couches. "Captain I'm going to give this plan tentative approval, full approval will be needed to execute it, but I have enough authority to get the ball rolling." Kenyon couldn't believe his ears and wanted to pinch himself to see if he was dreaming. One of his plans was going to be used, as the basis of a major operation.

"Captain I want you to join my planning team. Bring them up to speed and come up with specific mission parameters. I'll work in getting the General Staff to approve the mission and get the Manufacturing Division working on those suit modifications right away. Dismissed."

Captain Kenyon stood at stiff attention, facing the Admiral, "dismissed, aye sir." He took a sharp step to his rear and executed a parade ground perfect about face and marched from the room with a spring in his step.

Jaburo: Inside Space Dock #12

February 3, 0080

The upswing in activity in Dock #12 in the last 36 hours had surprised Christina and she still had no idea why it had happened. The maintenance crew that had been preparing to work on her damaged Gundam had suddenly been supplanted by a large team from one of the mobile suit manufacturing plants in Jaburo. In the last 24 hours they had removed every broken component and damaged armor plate. They had told her that a new head, backpack, forearm and cockpit were already being manufactured in one of the plants somewhere in the depths of the massive underground facility.

"Lieutenant Mackenzie?" a voice came from behind her. She turned away from looking up at her Gundam to face a worker in blue coveralls and a white hardhat. "That's me," she said flashing a smile at the worker, "what can I do for you?" The worker handed her a clipboard and a pen, "I need you to sign this authorization paperwork so that we can take your suit's reactor completely offline and remove it for replacement."

She had been looking down at the paperwork but looked back up at the worker. "The reactor's working fine; it wasn't damaged in the battle. Why's it getting replaced?" The worker shrugged, "It's being replaced with a more powerful 1500kW unit. Your old reactor is going to be used as a model and newly manufactured ones will be mounted in a large number of GMs and Guncannons." This answer gave her pause and made her wonder why a GM would need such a powerful reactor. "Any idea why they need so many powerful reactors?" she asked as she signed the paperwork at the places indicated by little pink sticky notes.

The worker shook his head as he accepted the clipboard back. "No ma'am. None of us have any idea what's going on. We got orders on the afternoon of the first to crank up into high gear, start doing some major modifications to a trio of RGM-79GS' and reactor replacements on a whole bunch more. My best guess is that there is some sort of major operation coming up, but past that…" the worker's voice trailed off as he raised his shoulders in a shrug.

She was about to ask another question when the ground started to shake with the footsteps of several mobile suits. She looked to her left at the entrance connecting the space dock to the rest of the underground complex. Three GM-79GS Space Command GMs came around the corner, moving slowly, to protect their lighter frames that really hadn't been designed to operate in a gravity environment. The three suits moved to standing maintenance bays just to the left of one that the Alex occupied. The hatches opened on all three machines and the workers that had been moving the mobile suits scrambled out onto the walkways that had extended in front of them once the machines had settled into their spots in the bays.

Christina was about to walk over to where the three GMs had parked themselves when a fourth mobile suit rounded the corner. This was a different type of GM and one even more rare than the three GS types that had already arrived. It was an RGM-79SP GM Sniper II, painted in its standard shades of dark blues. This suit was armed, unlike the other three, with its large, shell firing, sniper rifle attached to a hard point on the right side of the suit's unique backpack unit.

Christina had to take a few steps back to stay safely out of the range of the feet of the GM Sniper II. The suit walked past the bay that the Alex was in and stepped into the one to the Gundam's right, removed its rifle from its back and set the weapon in a weapons rack built into the bay's frame. Its rifle secure, the GM turned to face out like the rest of the mobile suits and began to power down as an access walkway extended to allow the pilot an easy way to exit the cramped confines of the cockpit.

She started to move towards the new arrival when she noticed a personal crest on the machine's left shoulder armor. It was a gray shield shape with a bright red border and a falcon's head in profile, also painted in red, in the center. Whoever this suit belonged to was an ace pilot, Christina though to herself as she moved to the base of the bay that the GM Sniper II now occupied. As she got close she felt the residual heat bleeding of the suit and looked up to see the cockpit hatch open. A man came out wearing a pilot's suit that mimicked the general paint scheme of his mobile suit. When he got out all the way and straightened up Chris was convinced that the new pilot was a man, because he was close to six feet tall and well… there just weren't that many female pilots in the Federation Forces.

Her suspicions were confirmed when the pilot, who had just reached the small lift that would bring him down to ground level, removed his helmet to reveal a man's head with some close cropped brown hair on top of it. He hit the control and the lift lowered him to where Christina was waiting for him.

Lieutenant Commander Christopher "Scope" Elliott had been in the air for the last nine hours and really needed to find a bathroom. He had spent the entire flight from Africa, the continent where he had been hunting down Zeon holdouts, in his mobile suit in the back of the Medea transport aircraft. He had had his suit's massive sniper rifle trained out the rear of the aircraft and his suit's specialized search optics engaged for the entire flight, in a vain attempt to spot and engage one of the many Zeonic submarines that was thought to be prowling the oceans of the world.

As the lift lowered him back to the ground he attached his helmet to the back of his pilot's suit and started looking for a head. His scan was interrupted when his eyes fell on the woman waiting for him on the ground. He checked her out. Doing very little to hide what he was doing, and found her attractive. "I wonder what she looks like when she isn't wearing that uniform," he thought to himself, not really thinking about her naked… but maybe… in something a little more feminine.

She was about 5 foot, 5 inches tall, had bright red hair that hung down to the middle of her back, fair skin that some might have called "ivory" in tone and finally, the most fetching dark blue eyes that he had ever seen. As the lift finally came to a stop she snapped off a crisp salute and the stretching of the material from that motion revealed that she had a slim build, with a respectable bust, but his gaze was drawn back to her eyes… there was a cool strength there.

He casually returned the salute. "Hey there Lieutenant," he dropped his hand, "I need to take a leak. Where is the nearest head?" That statement caught the red haired Lieutenant, junior grade, by surprise. She dropped her salute and pointed over to a two story building 100 yards away on the far side of the mobile suit movement path, "in the building over on the other side of the MS path sir." "Thanks Lieutenant," he said as he brushed past her and moved towards the building, walking, using the fast short steps used by any person who REALLY needs to pee.

He made it into the head in time and relieved his bladder into the large stainless steel trough style urinals. Setting his pilot suit to rights, he proceeded to exit the building he had scampered into a few minutes earlier. She was still there, now sitting on the edge of the maintenance bay that he had parked his GM Sniper II in. The red leather, which made up part of the pilot's jacket she was wearing, closely matched her hair for color. He sauntered back over to her and she started to rise to render another salute to her superior officer, he waved her back down. "Dispense with that parade ground bullshit Lieutenant. You already saluted me once today and in all honesty I've been holding the controls for my GM so long that I'm not sure that I have the energy to return your salute."

He flopped down into a sitting position next to the girl, she really was a girl he thought, and held out his hand towards the officer next to him. "Hi, I'm Lieutenant Commander Christopher Elliott, most people just call me Elliott though." To his surprise this made the Lieutenant laugh a little as she took his hand and shook it. "I'm Lieutenant Christina Mackenzie," she continued to smile as she let go of his hand, "and it's a good thing that people call you Elliott because my friends call me Chris and two Chris' could get really confusing really fast."

Elliott snorted out a quick laugh at that. "Yeah I bet that could get a little annoying," he replied. He switched gears and asked, "Any idea what's going on here? I just got pulled off the line in the Africa mopping up operation and sent here, no one told me why." Chris shook her head, "No idea at all sir. I actually originally came over here to ask you if you had any idea what was going on. Day before yesterday the activity in this dock went from zero to a hundred miles an hour sometime after lunch. The only suit in the dock was mine and it was barely getting worked on. Now there are a large number of suits and they're all getting updated, even though some of them are only a few months old."

Elliott looked around the massive chamber and realized that there were over 20 mobile suits there, in one stage of major modification or another. Another thing that Christina had said was true, many of the suits were practically brand new and in no need of modification, but there they were, with parts of their armor torn off and technicians swarming all over them like army ants. He noticed another thing, a large number of the suits were the new RGM-79GS Command Space model that weren't much inferior to his high-spec GM Sniper II.

Then he looked at the suit right next to his and didn't recognize its model. It certainly looked beefier than the surrounding GM's, but so many of its parts were removed he couldn't figure out what it was. He turned to Christina, "is that a customized GM? I've never that suit before." That drew another laugh from the red haired officer next to him. "That's my suit," she said, hopping up and walking towards her suit. Elliott summoned the energy, stood up and followed her over to stand in front of the mobile suit that was about to have its upper torso removed so that the reactor could be accessed. She continued to speak after he had caught up to her, "you've never seen this type of GM before because this isn't a GM, it's a Gundam."

That took Elliot by surprise and he looked back at the suit and right above one of the yellow chest vents was the suit's model number, "RX-78NT-1" said with a little awe in his voice. He looked back down at the short, red haired, pilot next to him, this girl was a Gundam pilot.

"How'd you pull that one off?" he asked, with only the slightest amount of jealously in his voice. She replied, "I had the highest score coming out of the academy and the highest score ever recorded at the pilot's academy in Brussels." This statement annoyed Elliott slightly, "I had the highest score coming out of that school," a little indignation in his voice. "You graduated a few months ahead of me sir," a slight smugness in her voice, " and records are made to be broken sir." That left Elliott at a loss for words, he thought for a second and then continued. "So you graduated and they put you in the test pilot program?" She nodded confirmation. "If you were just testing this suit how did it end up so messed up?"

He saw that that deflated her a bit. "We were assembling the Alex up at a base up in the Arctic when we got word that someone had sold our location to the Zeeks. We barely got everything on a shuttle before a Zeon spec-ops mobile suit team showed up and trashed the base. The shuttle only got off because one GM pilot stood guard until the end, his suit was incinerated by the exhaust from the shuttle."

Elliott saw that the subject he had just brought up had changed the demeanor of the young pilot, from what he guessed was her normal, upbeat self, to a sour and slightly down cast mood. "Hey Lieutenant, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," he said in an attempt to do something about the situation.

She shook her head, a slight, tight, frown crossing her face. "No, it's OK Commander. I actually wanted to ask an experienced pilot if there was anything that I could do better?" Elliott held up his hand, "I'll tell you right now that there is no substitute for experience. You went out, got some, and lived to tell about it. There is nothing more you can do than that. You got a bunch of good training and there's nothing that I can tell you that will help you anymore than more experience can."

Christina was about to open her mouth again to make a protest and to ask for the Commander's opinion on how she could improve as a pilot, when a throat clearing behind them made them both turn to see who had snuck up on them. A female Petty Officer 3rd Class stood there at attention, with a clipboard held in her left hand. As soon as they both turned their heads she snapped off a salute and waited for both the officers to return it before he dropped her hand and raised the other hand and looked at the clipboard. "Lieutenant Commander Elliott and Lieutenant junior grade Mackenzie?" "That's us," said Elliot, "what can we do for you Petty Officer?"

The Petty Officer pulled two sheets off the top and handed one to each of the officers. "There is going to be an initial mission brief at 1400 today and both of you have been ordered to attend by Operations Command." Christina scanned the sheet and looked over at Elliott who was still reading his, slightly longer sheet. She looked back at the sheet of paper in her hand and read it over again. She was being transferred from the mobile suit test pilot corps, to a unit called Task Force 73.

She turned to Elliott, who had just finished skimming over his orders sheet and was in the process of dismissing the Petty Officer. She waited until the NCO was on her way off and then she spoke. "Did you get transferred to Task Force 73 too sir." "Yeah," he said with a slight grimace on his face, "and I got made Commander of Mobile Suits too." He handed her the orders and she read them over for herself. They were identical to hers except for the addendum that he was to be made the Commander of all mobile forces of this, Task Force 73.

"Shit," Elliott spoke through clenched teeth, "I'm no Commander. I'm a sniper. I work alone." Christina saw a chance to turn his recent words against him. "Sir it's just a matter of experience," a mischievous smile, about to break out on her face. "It's not the fucking same," the frown on his face becoming more severe. The sudden loss of all of the humor in his voice caused her to practically freeze. The humorous pilot that she had met, coming out of the cockpit if his mobile suit, was gone and replaced by a brooding, sullen man. "When you're piloting yourself and you mess up then maybe you'll die, but when you're a Commander and you mess up it isn't just your life that you're putting on the line. Shit, what fucking retard put me in command of people."

She was looking around now, for anything she might use to pull the Commander out of the mood that he was plummeting into. She even considered undoing the top button of her pilot's jacket to give him a glimpse… no, no, no! She shook that though out of her head and looked at her watch instead. "Sir we've gotta move! The briefing starts in 30 minutes and we have to get to a briefing room in the headquarters building and that's in the main chamber. I've got a jeep at the far end of the mobile suit line, but we have to leave now if we're going to make it on time."

That seemed to put him in a slightly better mood. "Maybe we'll find the bastard who made me the Commander of the suits." A slightly wicked smile started to creep across his mouth, "and maybe I'll pound the assholes face in. Let's get to that jeep." He spun on his heel and headed off. She took a few quick steps to catch up and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to look at her. "Sir the jeep is this way." She pointed at the other end of the mobile suit line. "Fuckin' A," he said with the smile returning to his face, "lead on Lieutenant." "Sir," she said getting his attention again, "the name's Chris." He flashed a roguish smirk, "right on Chris, let's get going."

Jaburo: Headquarters Building, Operations Briefing Room

February 3, 0080

Captain Martin Kenyon stood back from the lectern waiting for all the officers to make it into the amphitheatre style briefing room. He was about to conduct the initial brief to the main officers of the newly formed Task Force 73. In the back of the room two more people entered, just before he was about to step up and begin. One was a man, with short brown hair, wearing a dark blue pilot's suit with the helmet hooked on to the backpack life support system. Walking next to him was a short young woman with dark red hair that reached down to the middle of her back. She was wearing the red and black leather jacket that was given to each top graduate of the Brussels mobile suit academy. "So that's Lieutenant Mackenzie," he said to himself as he arranged his papers one last time.

Stepping up to the podium he introduced himself. "Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. My name is Captain Martin Kenyon and I am the one who called this meeting under the authority of Admiral Foley. All of you have received your orders and know that you have been transferred to Task Force 73. Now let me tell you what this Task Force's mission is and its composition." He picked up a remote from the top of the lectern, turned slightly and pressed the button that turned the screen on.

Turning back to the audience Kenyon continued his brief. "Upon the conclusion of hostilities last month we have soundly defeated the military forces of the Principality of Zeon. However there are a large number of individual warships and smaller fleet units that are unaccounted for. A few of these units are believed to be currently under the command of Rear Admiral Delaz, and they are rumored to be hiding in the shoal zone. This force however can be dealt with in due course by current fleet units and is of very little concern to us."

He clicked the next button on the remote and a grainy image of a large asteroid appeared on the screen. "This is where we think that most of the missing fleet elements have headed for. It is the Zeon asteroid base known as Axis and it is way out there in the asteroid belt. As the ships of the Zeon Energy fleet don't have the same range as our ships, they needed a way station and Axis was built to refuel and service the ships heading to and coming back from Jupiter. As per the Antarctic Treaty the Energy Fleets were left out of the conflict and so we could not attack Axis."

He clicked again and another slide came up on the screen. This one showed a star field with a large fuzzy white blob in the middle. The blob had been circled in red just to make sure that it was clear for everyone in the room. "This large white blob in the middle of the screen is caused by the engine flares of dozens of warships. Their course and speed has been calculated and they are all heading towards Axis. We have no idea about their intentions about what they plan to do out there, but many people fear that the plan to rebuild their military strength and return to the Earth Sphere in some years and renew their war against the Earth Federation Government."

Another click of the remote and the star field disappeared and was replaced by a list of ships, mobile suits and general equipment. "Therefore it has been decided by Earth Federal Forces headquarters that a small reconnaissance fleet should be sent to determine the disposition and intentions of the Zeon forces that will be arriving at Axis about a year from now." He motioned to the list of ships on the screen, drawing attention to it. "This fleet will be built around the mobile suit and therefore the flagship will be the _Pegasus_ class assault carrier _Reprisal_." This got several people to start to mutter between each other. None of them knew that there was another _Pegasus_ class vessel that hadn't been committed to the war at very end. "This ship is the twin of the _Gray Phantom_ and had engine issues while under construction and will be ready for combat operations inside of a month. Escorting this assault carrier will be four new _Salamis_ class cruisers that have been outfitted for mobile suit combat, with a four suit hanger and a single launch catapult."

Another slide appeared on the screen and it showed a Zeon _Musai_ class light cruiser. It wasn't quite the same as the ships that had been the main line force during the war. It had two more main turrets and there were a number of two barreled 120mm machine gun turrets. The ship also had three large plates of metal raised from the forward part of the ships main body. "This is the Zeon _Musai _class, light cruiser _Guderian_, which was captured at Granada at the end of the war. It has since been renamed _Sparta_ and has been taken into our service. It will also be going out to the asteroid belt with you to help in the reconnaissance effort. It might be able to get in closer than our own ships and to assist in this effort it will be equipped with four captured Zeon mobile suits also captured at Granada."

Another slide came up on the huge wall screen. It showed a medium-large asteroid that was pitted by the impacts of smaller bits of rock. "This is the asteroid MA2356-8342 and it is within 400,000 kilometers of Axis. It also orbits at the same speed so the relative distance between the two stays about the same. A secondary objective of this mission is to construct a forward observation post on this asteroid to have a more permanent station from which to keep an eye on the Axis-Zeon forces. We'll be sending six _Columbus_ class cargo ships along with the fleet to supply the forces but we'll also be sending a _Delhi_ class construction ship to facilitate the construction of the base."

This mission was huge, thought Lieutenant Commander Chris Elliott. It was going to take a long ass time just to get out to the area of operations, somewhere in the frame of a year and a half, maybe less. They would be out there, with no hope for backup, against an unknown enemy force. That force was certainly larger than the one the Federation was sending, but how well would it be trained? The Zeeks had lost huge numbers of their experienced solders in the final battles of the war and there were few that were captured. Some had surely escaped to Axis, but he bet the majority of the pilots had escaped the battlefield were rookies that had survived through Solomon and A Baoa Qu just by dumb luck. Sure some of them had some skill but they had neither the training nor the experience to make much use of that skill.

He looked over to his right, to where Chris sat with a small note pad out and an expression of wrapped attention on her face. She's like those Zeon pilots in a way, he thought to himself. Sure she has had the benefit of a full training course but she still lacked experience and experience was the best but cruelest of all instructors. How would she fare in a do or die environment, such as this mission might become. Good thing she's in a Gundam, he started to turn his attention back to the briefing, maybe this little dickweed of a Captain was the one that had roped him into this new gig as the commander of the suit forces for this, Task Force 73.

Captain Kenyon has moved on to talking about the suit forces that the task force would be carrying and this topic was very important to him. "As some might have noticed the activity in Dock #12 has kicked into high gear in the last two days. This is due to the large number of modifications that have to be done to all the suits that are going to be sent on this mission. Every suit that is going is getting a more powerful reactor to allow all to use full power beam rifles, also most are getting thruster upgrades to allow for better maneuvering and acceleration. Also there are three RGM-79GS' that are going to be modified to NT-1 performance."

Elliot heard something shift next to him and looked over to see Chris sitting up straighter in her seat. Kenyon continued to drone on, "These GM's will be working directly with the RX-78NT-1 Gundam and need the upgrades simply to keep up with the superior performance of Lieutenant Mackenzie's Gundam. The Alex itself will be receiving a few minor upgrades of its own and we'll need to test all of these mobile suits out before TF 73 leaves for the asteroid belt. For now this concludes the brief. Ships officers need to come with me for another brief with Admiral Foley. The mobile suit pilots should meet up with Mobile Forces Commander Elliott, I think I see him there in the back, and see how he wants to set up training."

Chris stood and looked over at Elliott, who was just starting to stand himself. His face looked slightly grim. She could tell that he didn't like the fact that he was going to be in charge of the mobile suits for this task force. She heard some shuffling sounds and looked back at the rest of the theater shaped briefing room. There were over two-dozen officers making there way to where she and Elliott were standing. They all had to be pilots, due to the fact that their uniforms were none too neat. As they got closer she noticed that not all of them were actually officers, some were high-ranking staff NCOs they formed a loose semi-circle around where she and Elliott stood. She decided to take a few steps and join the circle of pilots, where she turned and faced the man who had just been named as the commander of all the mobile suits that were now part of Task Force 73, also known as the Axis Reconnaissance Fleet.

"So… yeah…" Elliott started to address the group, "I'm Lieutenant Commander Christopher Elliott and I guess I'm in charge of you all for this little shindig. " He turned his head scanning the faces of the men and women standing in front of him. "For right now I'm going back to my suits so I can grab my gear, get out of this pilot's suit and take a shower." This got a laugh out of the group of pilots, Elliott continued. "I just got off a long ass flight and just was to sleep," he focused his eyes on Chris, "Lieutenant Mackenzie, can you arrange a briefing room for tomorrow morning. Preferably one near whatever barracks that we're being billeted in."

Chris nodded her head in reply, thinking of all the possible places that she could choose from. "We're all billeted in officer's quarters in Dock #12 and that building has a conference room that we should all fit into. What time tomorrow sir?" She saw him roll is eyes back slightly and let out a sigh. "I'm fucking tired, so I wanna sleep in tomorrow. Let's say around 1100 hours tomorrow, consider yourselves on liberty until then. Dismissed." Chris, and all the pilots around her snapped off salutes, some neat, some sloppy. Elliott returned a salute, that somehow seemed sarcastic to Chris, turned on his heal and proceeded to leave the room. "Hey Lieutenant. You just going to stand there, or are you going to drive me back to where my suit is parked?"

She jumped a little and chided herself for not remembering that she had to do that and hurried after the retreating back of the senior pilot. She reached the jeep right after him and hopped in, turning the starter knob and drove the vehicle onto the super highway that looped itself around the main parts of the complex. Elliott rode in complete silence. She looked over at him and saw that he had one foot propped on the dashboard, his body leaning back in the seat with his head down and chin resting on the thick collar of his pilot's suit. She smiled and turned her head to look back at the road. "He's kinda cute like that," she thought to herself as she turned the wheel and moved the jeep onto the exit ramp for Space Dock #12.

She entered the dock and was amazed to see that in the short while they had been away from the dock a large new addition had been made to the mechanical residents of the dock. In the middle of the dock, resisting in its cradle, was a _Pegasus_ class assault carrier that had to be the _Reprisal_. She looked at one of the ship's leg like mobile suit decks and saw the ship's name painted on its white hull in gray paint. She reached the dock where Elliott's GM Sniper II was parked and had to shake him awake so that he could get his personal gear out of the mobile suit.

Task Force 73: Low Earth Orbit

April 7, 0080

The Rick-Dom II flashed past her, attempting to get behind her so it could attack her suit in its much more vulnerable backpack thruster area. It was a good move and would have worked except for the fact that the Alex was way to fast for a trick like that. Chris slammed the control sticks in opposite directions, turning the Gundam around, 180 degrees in eight tenths of a second. She hadn't even gotten her Gundam turned all the way around when targeting data on the Rick-Dom started to pop up on the full panoramic monitor that her suit had pioneered.

Whoever was piloting the Zeon suit was really good, though, and had started his turn before he had even gone past the Gundam. This meant that he had got turned around at the same time as Chris got her faster Alex turned around. The Rick-Dom loosed two rockets from the 360mm bazooka it carried. Chris responded with a single beam from her suit's beam rifle. The rifle was a new one, looking more like the 90mm GM rifle than anything else. The bullpup design made for a longer barrel in a weapon that was the same size, thus allowing for a tighter and therefore more accurate beam.

The beam missed as the Rick-Dom II sideslipped out of the way and Chris downed the two rockets with a single burst from the 60mm Vulcan guns in her Gundam's head. The Gundam's advanced optics kept track of the dodging suit that was heading up and slightly to the right in an attempt to get above the Gundam and into another favorable firing position. "This guy's pretty good" she though as she shifted her suit's direction and angle to keep better track of the Rick-Dom. "I guess I'll use it against him." She fired three quick beams in front of the enemy suit and got the desired effect. The pilot fired the suits massive thrusters, trying to change his direction to get away from the danger and this slowed his suit enough that Chris' fourth beam made contact with the suit's midsection.

The mega-particle beam should have burned a hole straight through the Rick-Dom's titanium composite armor but it only made a light scorch mark on the paint. This was only an exercise. The computer that was keeping track of the exercise fired the Rick-Dom's thrusters, bringing the suit to a stop in orbit above the blue green planet. It also started broadcasting the "I'm dead" signal on the exercises' data frequency. Having administratively "killed" the Rick-Dom II she looped the Alex back towards where the task force was under simulated attack. The exercise had started with three squadrons of aggressors in captured Principality mobile suits attacking from another Federation fleet. The fleets stayed out of each other's attack ranges and let the mobile suits mix it up.

She flicked a switch on the control panel that was built into the right side of her linier pilots seat. This brought up the tactical information feeds from the rest of the mobile suits in her team. The three NT-1 class GM's, people were calling them the GM Flash because of their high speed, were doing well. Each had one kill and only one had taken any damage, which the computer running the exercise had determined to be cosmetic.

"_Reprisal_, this is Flash lead." She waited for a response from the assault carrier that was her team's home. "Flash lead, this is _Reprisal_." It was the mobile suit controller Ensign Kara Thornton, "go ahead." "You have any more business for me," Chris was scanning her panoramic screen as she brought her Gundam back in close to the _Reprisal_. "Not currently Flash lead. All remaining enemy suits are in the fur ball 120km off our port bow. Scope's orders for your team remain the same. Hold CSP* around the task force and engage any leakers." "Roger that _Reprisal_." She flicked here radio back to her team's tactical frequency with a little annoyance. Her team had four of the most powerful mobile suits built to date. Why was Commander Elliott holding them in the rear? If he let them zoom forward into the fray ahead if the fleet they would have made short work of the Zakus and Rick-Dom IIs that made up the enemy force that made up the enemy's assault force.

"Flash team check in," she transmitted on here team's tactical frequency. A GM Flash pulled up on her left and fell into formation slightly behind her cruising Gundam. The suit almost looked like her Gundam except for two major differences. The first was the head unit which looked almost the same as it had when the suit had been a stock RGM-79GS Command Space Type. The only outward difference on the head was the high gain radio antenna that had been added from the GM Sniper II design. The other things that the GM NT-1's lacked were the Gatling cannons that the Alex had mounted on its forearms. They, like every other suit and ship in the task force, were painted in shades of gray, that helped them blend into the background of blackness and stars.

"This is Flash two," reported Chris' wingman, Ensign Heather Graham. "Ammo and fuel ok. No damage to report." "This is Flash three, lead." Flash three was the second element leader, Lieutenant junior grade Even Harper. "I'm currently cruising on the far right of the battle line. Ammo and fuel are ok, no damage to report." "Last but not least there's me," came the voice of Flash four, Ensign Rebecca Nash. "Ammunition and fuel are ok. Got some scratch damage from 90mm rounds fired by the Zaku that I downed. This Lunar Titanium armor is pretty awesome. I'm returning to my patrol zone to rejoin Lieutenant Harper."

Having checked on her teammates she changed the data feed she had on her monitor to the one that the _Reprisal_'s sensors were pulling in. This allowed her to keep an eye on a much larger area because the _Reprisal_'s sensors could detect a mobile suit at over 300km distance and warships at over 500km, provided that there wasn't a whole lot of debris or Minovsky Particle jamming. Even with debris and jamming they had a much better range than the ones that her suit possessed.

The sensor feed showed that the upgraded GM Command Space Types, upgraded GM Cannons and upgraded MP Guncannons, which were engaged in the fur ball, were doing ok. Only three of those suits were out of the fight and none of them had been destroyed outright. The aggressor Zeon suits on the other hand were not doing all that well, with eight Zaku's of different types lost and four Rick-Dom's out of the fight.

She queried the _Reprisal_'s sensors to find where Elliott was hiding in he GM Sniper II. It turned out he was hiding among the task force's _Columbus_ class supply ships, using the sensor data from the _Reprisal_ to direct the mobile suits under his command. He had yet to fire an administrative round from the 155mm sniper rifle his suit carried, not wanting to reveal his location unless absolutely necessary. She flipped another switch so that she could listen in on the channel he was using to command the mobile suits that were engaged in front of the task force's position in orbit.

"_Jutland_ GM team shift over and support the _Midway_'s team, the weight of the attack seems to be shifting into their AO**. All ranged suits stay back as best you can and take shots when you get them." His orders had the sound of confidence in them, Chris thought to herself as she turned her Gundam around at the far edge of her patrol zone. There had been constant exercising for the last two months. The first month had been in simulators while the modifications were done to their mobile suits and the second had been done in space, in orbit and in the debris zone that used to be Side 2. This was their last major exercise before a maintenance stand-down and, finally, Task Force 73's departure for the asteroid belt.

A cacophony of warning beeps brought her attention to the sensor feed to her suit from _Reprisal_. Three mobile suits were coming in right above the fleet and they were coming in fast. "Flash team, go intercept those three bogies. I just glassed them with my optics and they're all Gelgoogs. One seems to be a Jäger type, that suit belongs to Flash lead and Flash two. Flashes three and four you have the other two suits. If I get a good shot I'll call it out before I take it."

"Ok girls and guy," Chris said as she pushed her suit to its max acceleration and putting it on the course that the suit's computer calculated to be the best one for an intercept, "let's go get some." Next to her, Heather had also pushed her suit to its maximum acceleration, but it wasn't quite as fast as the Alex and started to fall behind. "Heather I'm going to try and get him to chase me. You try and get in behind him and blast his ass." "Roger that lead," Heather replied and she dropped back a little farther behind her team leader to get in a position to drop in behind the red painted Gelgoog.

When the range between her Gundam and the enemy Gelgoog had dropped to six kilometers, Chris snapped of a round from her beam rifle and watched as the Gelgoog evaded it with ease, rolling to its left out of the way of the low powered mega-particle beam. Then it opened up with its own heavy beam machine gun and Chris tensed her muscles getting ready to slam her own suit into an evasive maneuver. Then she realized the Gelgoog wasn't shooting at her, it was shooting past her at Heather behind her.

"Heather go evasive," Chris called out on the team frequency, but it was too late. The first several beams of the Jäger's long burst went wide, but then the big Zeon suit walked the rest onto the GM, that had just managed to get its shield up. It didn't matter; the beams from the heavy weapon administratively punched through the titanium ceramic composite shield and hit the hardened Lunar Titanium that armored the GM Flash, disabling the customized suit and taking it out of the fight, tho not destroying it outright.

"SHIT, SHIT, SHIT," Chris said through clenched teeth as the Gelgoog flashed through the space that she had just moved her Gundam out of to avoid the beams that hadn't even been aimed at her. She whipped her Gundam around in attempt to re-acquire a target lock on the Gelgoog. She succeeded but, the Gelgoog darted behind Heather's disabled GM Flash and Chris lost the lock. She pressed hard on the thruster peddles to race after the Gelgoog which had to be driving towards the ships of the task force.

Apparently the Gelgoog's pilot had a different idea. He had stopped his massive suit just behind Heather's disabled GM Flash and let off a burst from his beam machine gun as Chris blazed past his impromptu hiding spot. The only thing that kept Chris from getting basted was the panoramic monitor that her suit possessed. Just out of the corner of her eye she saw the maroon red of the enemy suit and rolled her suit out of the way of the burst of beams that could have destroyed, or at least seriously damaged her Gundam.

That pissed her off. The rat bastard was using her wingman as a human shield. She couldn't get a good shot at the bastard as he danced his suit around the GM, again putting it between himself and Chris in her Gundam. Chris brought out her precise targeting scope and looked for any bit of the large suit sticking out from behind the much smaller GM. There wasn't any. The pilot of the suit somehow fit the bulky suit behind the relatively skinny GM. Then the beam machine gun stuck out from behind her friend's GM and let off a quick burst.

Chris angled her shield and ricocheted the small beams up and away from her Gundam. She lowered the shield and saw that the enemy pilot had charged out from behind his shield, apparently having gotten the reaction that he had been hoping for. He raced towards Chris, thrusters blazing and she understood what he was going to do. He was going us his suit's mass to throw her off balance and finish her off, well she had a plan that would finish this jackass off.

"Scope," she called, using Commander Elliott's nickname. I'm going to give you a good shot on the Jäger, be ready to take it." "On target," was the reply. Christina crouched her mobile suit so that as much of it as possible was hid behind the shield, acting like she was going to try and ward off the blow. She released the shield from its mounting point and simply let it hang in front of her suit. Hidden behind the shield she placed her beam rifle on its hard point on the Gundam's rear skirt armor and waited, staring at the sensor feed.

The Jäger extended one of its large feet to plant a heavy kick on the top third of the shield. The large foot connected and sent the unattached shield spinning. At the same time Chris sent her suit into a roll right under the shield and the now off-balance Gelgoog. The move got her behind the Jäger and she brought both the forearms of her Gundam up. She pressed the trigger and the covers popped open on the Gatling cannons and they began to fire. These cannons however weren't the shell firing kind, that the Alex had originally equipped with, but beam Gatling cannons, each of who's bolts was supposed to be slightly less powerful than a shot from a GM's beam spray pistol.

The low powered practice beams raked the back of the Gelgoog and the exercise computer registered the destruction of all the mobile suit's main thrusters, sending the Gelgoog off on a fixed trajectory. "Shoot," Chris shouted into her radio microphone.

Elliott squeezed the main trigger on the right hand control of his GM Sniper II, firing a single 155mm round from the massive sniper rifle. Two and a half seconds later the round impacted on the cockpit hatch of the Gelgoog, splattering it with a large quantity of green paint. "That's a kill!" "I confirm the kill," Chris' voice came over the radio. There was a pause and then she came back on the circuit. "I also confirm that Harper and Nash downed the other two Gelgoogs. They were basic A types and didn't give them too much trouble. They spent most of their time chasing them down. Apparently the only job they had been to draw the two of us off so that the Jäger could deal with us."

"Roger that Flash lead. Get your disabled suit back to the _Reprisal_. Harper and Nash can keep CSP running for a while without you." He turned his sensor feed back to that being sent out by the _Reprisal_, the enemy suits that had been engaging the suits under his command were starting to break off. That is the few that still could were breaking off. The pilots under his command were good to begin with, but after two months of simulations and exercises, they were practically unstoppable. "I guess this one's over," he said to himself as he reached for the radio knob and tuned his radio to the aggressor's frequency.

"Better luck next time boys. Enjoy your trip back to Luna II." Elliott was about to switch his radio back to the frequency that he used to talk to his mobile suits when a gruff voice replied. "You won't be getting rid of all of us. Four of us are headed to that empty _Musai_ that you're got hanging out next to that fancy assault carrier of yours."

That got Elliott's attention. These must be the four Zeonic suits that were supposed to be assigned to him as a commando and close recon force. They had been training separately because they had to familiarize themselves with a whole new type of mobile suit design. Federation Intelligence had also trained them as infiltration agents who were to try and get inside Axis if possible.

He saw four suits break off from the retreating aggressor forces and head towards the task force. "Then let me be the first to welcome you to Task Force 73… uh… I didn't catch your name." The gruff voice laughed and replied, "so sorry about that. I'm Lieutenant Boris Yevgeni Popov, commander of Sneak Team a.k.a. the 231st Independent Mobile Suit Team."

That name caught Elliott by surprise. He had heard it somewhere before but he wasn't sure… it came back to him. "You were the first Federation soldier to get your hands on a mobile suit aren't you? An old Zaku II C if I'm not mistaken." "Yeah that was me," Lieutenant Popov replied, "I was on a recon patrol in the Ukraine when I ran across a Zeek mobile suit team that had racked out for the night. They had one man on sentry and he was easy enough to deal with. I took the only suit that had its hatch open, figured out the basic workings and wrecked everything in the camp with the 120mm. Since then I've been in the Zeon suit department, most doing intelligence work figuring out suit capabilities, but with some covert operations later in the war."

He was about ask another question of the experienced pilot, when he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. His GM Sniper II, along with all the other mobile suits in the task force, had been equipped with panoramic monitors just like the one that the Alex was equipped with. The new monitor allowed him to see Christina's Gundam pull into formation next to his cruising GM Sniper II. "Hey Commander, where you going?" she asked over the radio. "The team of Zeek mobile suits for the _Sparta_ is here. I guess they took part in the exercise and they're headed in now. I was gonna head out there and greet them. Want to come along?" "Sure," came the reply from the female pilot. He flipped a switch and the GM auto stowed the massive sniper rifle on its hard point. The weapon away, he pushed a little harder on the thruster peddles and next to his suit the Gundam matched his acceleration.

He checked his sensor screen and saw three, no, four fuzzy returns at the very edge of his 12km detection range. Flipping a switch on the control stick in his left hand he dropped the suit's special optics package down in front of the suit's main camera. With very precise commands he moved the GM's head until the long-range camera was focused on the incoming group of Zeon built mobile suits. "Well, you aren't going to like this Chris," he said upon observing what the suits were.

"Why's that?" she asked. Her Gundam's optics, while good, were just not as good as the ones installed in the GM Sniper II. "Because one of the suits coming in is that Gelgoog Jäger you love so much." He enjoyed hearing the string of profanity that came over his radio speaker. "No Lieutenant you can't do that to the guy. He's a full Lieutenant, just like you, but he is WAY senior to your month and a half in grade." "Whatever," she sounded like she was in a huff now, "he's still a dick."

They joined up with the incoming suits; Elliott had Chris fly on the far side of the formation from the red painted Gelgoog Jäger. They escorted them to the single _Musai_ that the task force possessed and watched, their mobile suits hanging motionless in zero gravity over the light cruiser, as the ships crew went through the rather laborious process of putting the suits back in the hanger. The suits safely in their hanger, Elliott turned his GM for its home hanger in the port side leg of the _Reprisal_. Christina followed, heading to the starboard hanger where her mobile suit spent its down time.

Bridge: EFSFS _Reprisal_

April 7, 0080

Rear Admiral Otto Von Kress had been reading over the results of the latest exercise when his communications officer handed him a dispatch from EFF headquarters back in Jaburo. Commander Elliott was coming along very well as his mobile suit forces commander, he though as he looked down at piece of paper that he had just been handed. The orders had come. He was to take his Task Force 73, to the former Principality fortress of Solomon to top off supplies and fuel, and then he was to launch his fleet into its year and a half long voyage into the void of space.

He picked up the communications hand set that was part of the right armrest of his bridge chair. "Lieutenant Willis," he was speaking to the same communications officer that had just given him the dispatch moments before. "Yes sir," he replied. "Would you put me on every speaker in the fleet?" "Aye, aye sir," came the response to his order, "you're online sir." Von Kress took a breath and began to speak to every man and woman under his command. "Ladies and gentlemen our orders have come and this fleet is headed to the former Zeon fortress of Solomon, where we will top off on supplies and fuel. Once that is done, we will begin the long journey to the asteroid belt and the mission that we have been asked to do. All I ask of you is that you give me your best, because that is all you will ever get from me. Godspeed to us all."

He put the hand set back into its cradle and looked around at the other offices and enlisted people on the bridge. "Here we go people, here we go…"

Author's Notes:

* CSP: Combat Space Patrol

** AO: Area of Operations

This story and all related material is copyrighted by D.A. "Zakuboy" Barry, no part of this story may be taken by any other person. If you wish to use any material, please contact me first. Gundam and all related trademarks are owned by their respective companies.


End file.
